


What now, fearless leader?

by Penstrokes



Series: Self indulgency [2]
Category: Captain Underpants - Fandom
Genre: Animorphs AU, Gen, no actual dialogue, self indulgent writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 16:34:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16433000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penstrokes/pseuds/Penstrokes
Summary: Animorphs AU: Mr. Krupp never wanted anything even remotely similar to fighting an alien invasion, much less being in charge of one.Out of obligation, love and stupid optimism, he finds the strength to do what he must, what he can, despite the blaring target on his back.To save not only the world but in a sense, himself.





	What now, fearless leader?

To say Mr. Krupp was perpetually stressed was an understatement. If he hadn’t been strained by the struggle of balancing both the administrative side of school as well as the more public face of it with the kids, he certainly was now. Mr. Krupp could say that his twenty odd year experience in dealing with the school system gave him an upper hand on fighting this secret alien war he hadn’t wanted any part of in the first place. 

 

Of course, Krupp still didn’t want any part to deal with cleaning up some other aliens’ mess that spilled itself across the galaxy, but life had found a way of roping him into it. 

 

The damned alien invasion had found itself buried in the school system. Just as luck would have it, a worrying bulk of it was buried around his in particular. Piqua was not the hot spot for the invasion, but it was in the path of it’s expansion. It wound itself into the fabric of society, quietly and discrete. It seeped into communities, loners and families.

 

Families with children. 

 

Some of who went to  _ his  _ school, and it automatically made that  _ his  _ problem. Ben had never wanted this, to play leader in a covert war. As a ten year old, it might have almost sounded fun. Fun when he wasn’t painfully aware of what it would entail, when he didn’t already know how hard it would be to run an underfunded team to achieve a goal that only seemed to be getting farther away from him. 

 

He had every logical reason to bow out, to put his hands up and wash himself clean of it all. 

 

Yet he couldn’t and he didn’t. Maybe it was because of Edith, who tried to plead for some sort of action. There were few people Krupp would never have wanted this war to touch, to sulley in ways with no turning back. Edith was one of them.

 

She had refused to back down, to sit idly. 

 

So he’d signed on too. 

 

That’s what he told himself and that was mostly true. There were other factors, a nagging insistence deep inside that kept pulling him back from turning away.  Perhaps some long lost nugget of naivety, some part of him that still hoped in goodness and truth triumphing over the evils spoke to him. This part of him that was silly, almost reckless enough to hope in the face of reality had doomed him.

 

Krupp had never been a very sociable man, certainly not after he’d taken his current position. Now he carried himself ramrod straight, always wary and cautious of every interaction. What had once been an act out of exhaustion and awkwardness was an act of self preservation. It was one of the few benefits his old life had granted his new one and one he’d use to his full advantage. 

 

Every parent that came calling about their child, every passing comment and complaint from his staff was met with disguised scrutiny, coupled with the general annoyance from before. Krupp lived in a world where reading between the lines and speaking in them were common sense. Having two conversations at once, one bound by professionalism that came with both authority and responsibility. The other an exasperated effort of one man to try and make a difference, to do  _ anything. _

 

Everyone wanted something from him. His attention. His authority. 

 

His body.

 

His life. 

 

The staff and the parents craved for his attention, albeit for very different reasons. The staff to look into issues they themselves could not attend to. Either because of duty, or rules...or because it was a want that would sneakily try to plead him to help them out with. Parents wanted him to use his position to help their kids, some who truly deserved better and some who would rather try and play the system like a joke. 

 

The Yeerks wanted him. As a pawn in their system, to use  _ kids  _ as a stepping stone to their more powerful and useful parents.  They both knew him and didn’t know him. They knew him as one mister Benjamin Krupp, one elementary school principal. One in how many dozen dozen other school administrators did they have their yeerks in their heads pulling strings? They knew him, both directly and indirectly as the leader of the ‘Andalites Bandits’. They wanted him alive. They wanted him dead.

 

Mr. Krupp was a walking target no matter where he went. In every form, everyone wanted to reach out and take a piece of him. 

 

If it weren’t for Edith. If it weren’t for that sense of obligation married to idiotic optimism, mated to stubbornness, Ben wasn’t sure where he would find the strength to keep going. To make the plans and do the hard thing.  

 

To protect the ones he loved, how many few they were. 

 

To buy just a little more time for the rest of the world who most likely didn’t give a damn about who he was.

 

To save himself.

 


End file.
